Sunday, January 18, 2015

Ideologues often cherry-pick a few facts to support
their arguments, but, when all is said and done they have no use for reality.

Their true love is the logic of their arguments. They are
often willing to follow said logic to the point of making complete fools of
themselves.

When you make yourself and your cause look ridiculous, it’s
time to ask go back to the drawing board. At least, this explains why fewer and fewer women are willing to declare themselves to be feminists.

And feminism, as one commenter pointed out, is a gift the keeps on giving.

One imagined that feminists had hit rock bottom when they
invented the concept of: “manspreading.” If that does not tell you that you
need some serious rehab, I don’t know what will. The concept was so vapid that
I chose, at first, to ignore it.

By their new concept feminists meant to attack the men who open
their legs wide while sitting on the subway. The feminists may or may not know,
but a man whose legs are open wide is signifying power and even manliness.

Yet, feminists take it personally. They believe that men do
this in order to hog space, invading territory that ought by rights to belong
to those whose knees always touch each other.

Then again, for all I know these manspreaders might be
trying to get a bit closer to the women on their left and right.

Apparently, the misandrist wing of the feminist cult seems
to have been running out of ways to attack men. That seems to be why it felt compelled to invent the new word: manspreading.

To be fair, feminists could also have staged a protest where
they shamed the malespreaders by engaging in womanspreading. That is, they could have appropriated excessive subway space by
sitting with their legs spread apart. Surely, that would show men how
uncomfortable it is to be seating next to a creature that spreads his or her
legs?

Now, in the race to find look like the complete fool, Mount Holyoke College feminists have one-upped their New York sisters. Formerly one of
America’s great educational institutions, Holyoke has just banned a production
of “The Vagina Monologues.”

If you don’t know why, you’ll never guess. The College found
the play offensive because it discriminates against women without vaginas. That
is, it suffers from the dreaded transphobia.

Yikes!

Since Eve Ensler’s play identifies woman by their vaginas, the logic goes, it ignores those beings who believe they are women even though they lack the
defining orifice.

Allow me to point out, for your edification, that some
transgendered women do indeed have surgically-constructed vaginas. From a
discrete distance a surgically-constructed vagina resembles the real thing.
Yet, it lacks certain functionalities that obtain with an actual vagina.

Should we therefore call these faux vaginas real? Is it prejudicial to think that a real vagina is
materially different from a faux
vagina? And, should a transgendered woman with a surgically-constructed vagina
have annual visits to her/his gynecologist?

Great minds are going to have a tough time with those deep
philosophical questions.

The way things are going now, one expects that one day a
governmental agency will pass a regulation saying that obstetricians, upon
delivering babies, are no longer allowed to say: “It’s a boy” or “It’s a girl.”
The political correct locution will be: “It’s undecided.”

To be more serious, Campus Reform has done yeoman work
reporting the events at Mount Holyoke, beginning with an explanatory email sent
by someone who supported the ban:

“At its
core, the show [The Vagina Monologues] offers an extremely narrow perspective on what it means to be a
woman...Gender is a wide and varied experience, one that cannot simply be
reduced to biological or anatomical distinctions, and many of us who have
participated in the show have grown increasingly uncomfortable presenting
material that is inherently reductionist and exclusive,” the email, obtained
by Campus Reform, said.

Replacing
the play will be Mount Holyoke’s own version that will be trans-inclusive and
fix the “problems” supposedly perpetuated by Ensler. Murphy also claims that
there are problems with race, class, and “other identities” within the play.

The new
production, comprised of students’ monologues, will be performed in a fashion
reminiscent of the feminist classic. The program will be performed alongside
the College’s Peer Health Educators, an on-campus student-led group that
provides education and workshops for students, including a workshop on
how to use sex toys properly.

Note the closing line. Mount Holyoke will not only
indoctrinate their students with politically correct propaganda. It will also
teach them how to use sex toys properly.

Decadence, anyone?

Yet, the reference raises a salient issue. Those who obsess
over Eve Ensler’s paean to vagina consciousness ignore the other word in her
title: “monologues.”

Truth be told, those women who become absorbed contemplating
their vaginas—better than navel-gazing, I suppose—are more likely to have a sex
life that resembles a monologue than a dialogue.

Thus, the reference to the proper use of sex toys—what, pray
tell would be the improper use of sex toys?—becomes strangely apposite.

Unfortunately, as I have occasionally averred, a woman who
insists on being recognized for her external genitalia is far less likely to be
respected for her professional achievements or even her mind.

Funnily enough, the same rule applies to a male who puts his
private parts on public display.

3 comments:

Manspreading: I remember reading, in the late '50s or the '60s, that it was improper/impolite/uncouth for a man to sit that way, and it was perhaps illustrated by a picture of Sgt. Garcia of the TV series Zorro, who often sat that way.

I found it interesting to note that the other day I saw two persons that appeared to be women (since they were wearing pants it can be said that there was no visible evidence of male genitalia) sitting at a near-by four-top occupying the space for all four seats.

I'm guessing that their combined weight was in the order of magnitude 50 stone and that alone accounted for them sitting with their legs at angels that had their outboard legs interfering with aisle-traffic and their inboard legs blocking the space assinged to the unoccupied chairs.

On the "manspreading" "issue" I could not fail to notice in this clip (which should first be watched all the way through for what is clearly the proper reason) that of all of the audience members that we can see clearly enough to make a valid guess as to biological sex, the men are sure enough "manspreading" in most cases COMPLETELY WITHIN THE CONFINES OF THEIR CHAIR (in most cases with an inch or more "clearance" on each side, while the women or their clothing encroaches on the space between the chairs.